Open a copy of the Information Please Almanac and turn to the chapter on famous people. 4000 names and you won't know hardly any. But what about names everyone knows? Pillsbury, Kraft, Maytag, Hertz, Kellogg, Gerber. Nowhere to be found. How many names are more famous than Howard Johnson? Milton Bradley? Oscar Mayer? But who were these folks? Let’s find out now.

February 12, 2007

Macy's

And the man behind the brand is...Rowland Macy

Rowland Hussey Macy was born of Quaker stock on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts and like many young men was seized by the sea. He sailed at the age of 15 on the Emily Morgan, bound for Cape Horn and beyond. He spent four years sailing through the South Seas before returning to Massachusetts. Although he was often called Captain Macy in later years he never again set to sea, save as a passenger.

Macy had no clear idea what to do after his sea adventures and for several years his trail is lost to history. He surfaced in the dry goods trade in Boston is 1844, his first of several marginally successful retail operations. In 1849 Macy headed for San Francisco in the Gold Rush, leaving behind his wife and family.

His success in the gold fields is unknown but by 1850 he was doing business in Marysville as Macy & Company but the merchant partnership was soon put up for public auction. We next find Macy back in Haverhill, Massachusetts operating a store offering a full line of dry goods in 1853. He was experimenting with many of the principles that would later become Macy staples: dealing only in cash, a single price policy and extensive advertising. But this venture failed also.

Macy tried brokering for a short while and then bolted to Superior City, Wisconsin in 1857 to engage in land speculation just as the boom shipping town was going bust. At the age of 35, struggling in the nation's heartland, it was hard to see how Rowland Macy had laid the foundation for creating the world's most famous department store.

Macy came to New York in 1858 and opened a small fancy goods store. He chose a corner uptown from the main shopping district where several merchants before him had failed. As an adventurer from Boston veteran New York merchants conceded Macy would meet the same fate.

His tiny 20 foot by 60 foot store had counters running down both sides and through the middle leaving but two narrow aisles. Was the site selection foresight or simply the result of lack of funds? For years the location was no great advantage but slowly the New York trade moved away from the southern end of Manhattan towards Macy.

Three weeks after opening Macy was burglarized of over $1000 worth of goods and several months later a window fire cost him $2000 in losses. They were setbacks a merchant grossing $5 a day at the start could ill afford. For two years Macy's was only one of scores of similar stores struggling to survive when he offered a department of "French and German fancy goods": pocketbooks, handbags, frames, games and dolls.

Gradually Macy's store was becoming a department store, although there was no such appellation at the time. He had 22 distinct lines of goods and struggled with a suitable name for his business. He tried such cumbersome titles as "Macy's Grand Central Fancy Goods Establishment."

By whatever name Macy prospered. He advertised relentlessly and with great innovation. He was not afraid to use white space in the grey, copy-heavy papers of the time. He repeated words and used special eye-grabbing patterns with his headlines. Macy wrote his own copy in a personal anecdotal style rather than the formal tomes of his competition.

Macy continued his policies, first nurtured in Massachusetts, of dealing only in cash, offering his goods at the lowest prices possible and setting a single price for all. These tenets would become standard practices by department stores that would follow Macy's.

Macy pioneered many promotional selling tactics. He began using a five-point red star to identify his goods as early as 1862. He used clearance sales, free delivery and solicited mail orders. Macy introduced fractional and odd pricing to suggest bargains. His ads proclaimed that "Macy's will not be undersold."

The small original store expanded piecemeal until Macy had the ground space of 11 stores, employing over 400 people. Receipts had grown into the thousands each day. Macy, however, began to suffer the ill effect of constant attention to his business. In the 1870s he contracted Bright's disease of the kidneys.

He sailed to Europe for rest and medical treatment in 1877. Suspecting the gravity of his situation Macy had arranged his affairs so his partners could continue the business in the event of his death, which in fact came in Paris at the age of 55.

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About Me

I am a writer/publisher of guidebooks for hiking with your dog. Once upon a time I wrote a book called SO WHO THE HECK WAS OSCAR MAYER with stories about people we know mostly only as brand names. I find the back stories interesting but I also like to re-visit these posts for their value as inspiring sagas. Time and time again you learn from these folks about the value of putting failure behind you and getting on with it.